t had there been an earthquake. Let us at least admire the Triton
of Bernin. What a sculptor that man was! yet he never thought of nature
except to falsify it."

These incoherent remarks were made with a good-nature decidedly
optimistic, as could be seen, when the fiacre finally drew up at the
given address. It was that of a very modest restaurant decorated with
this signboard: 'Trattoria al Marzocco.' And the 'Marzocco', the lion
symbolical of Florence, was represented above the door, resting his paw
on the escutcheon ornamented with the national lys. The appearance of
that front did not justify the choice which the elegant Dorsenne had made
of the place at which to dine when he did not dine in society. But his
dilettantism liked nothing better than those sudden leaps from society,
and M. Egiste Brancadori, who kept the Marzocco, was one of those
unconscious buffoons of whom he was continually in search in real life,
one of those whom he called his "Thebans", in reference to King Lear.
"I'll talk a word with this same learned Theban," cried the mad king, one
knows not why, when he meets "poor Tom" on the heath.

That Dorsenne's Parisian friends, the Casals, the Machaults, the De
Vardes, those habitues of the club, might not judge him too severely, he
explained that the Theban born in Florence was a cook of the first order
and that the modest restaurant had its story. It amused so paradoxical an
observer as Julien was. He often said, "Who will ever dare to write the
truth of the history?" This, for example: Pope Pius IX, having asked the
Emperor to send him some troops to protect his dominions, the latter
agreed to do so--an occupation which bore two results: a Corsican hatred
of the half of Italy against France and the founding of the Marzocco by
Egiste Brancadori, says the Theban or the doctor. It was one of the
pleasantries of the novelist to pretend to have cured his dyspepsia in
Italy, thanks to the wise and wholesome cooking of the said Egiste. In
reality, and more simply, Brancadori was the old cook of a Russian lord,
one of the Werekiews, the cousin of pretty Alba Steno's real father. That
Werekiew, renowned in Rome for the daintiness of his dinners, died
suddenly in 1866. Several of the frequenters of his house, advised by a
French officer of the army of occupation, and tired of clubs, hotels, and
ordinary restaurants, determined to form a syndicate and to employ his
former cook. They, with his cooperation, est